SCHALKE’S DEPRESSINGLY YOUNG MANAGER
In the Champions League last 16, Pep Guardiola will be pitting his wits against a manager younger than Man City’s midfield general. Domenico Tedesco is 33 and Fernandinho’s junior, although there’s no such awkwardness at Schalke, who have yet to field any player over the age of 30 this season.
But who is he? So said everyone when Schalke hired Tedesco. One of Germany’s top clubs paid €500,000 to appoint a 31-year-old business engineering graduate who used to work for Mercedes, had never played pro football, and whose 11-match career in management consisted of saving Erzgebirge Aue from relegation to the third tier (via a play-off). Schalke’s sporting director, Christian Heidel, who hired Jurgen Klopp and Thomas Tuchel at Mainz, enthused, “He is highly intelligent but very grounded. He doesn’t use platitudes and he’s very communicative. He has a clear plan.”
Tedesco repaid Heidel’s faith by taking Schalke from the bottom half up to 2nd, drawing 4-4 at local rivals Dortmund along the way after trailing 4-0 at half-time. In his opening campaign, the German-italian – whose surname actually means ‘German’ in Italian – stunned the Bundesliga with his direct, counter-attacking 3-4-3.
Then it all went a bit wrong, and 2018-19 is Tedesco’s difficult second album. Key midfielders Leon Goretzka and Max Meyer left on free transfers, other teams got wise to Tedesco’s tactics and Schalke lost their first five Bundesliga games. At the winter break, their joint-top scorers with three goals apiece were Spurs émigré Nabil Bentaleb (all penalties) and consonant-hoarding Steven Skrzybski, who scored twice in one game. Schalke won’t be in the Champions League again unless they win it.
That’ll take some doing: they’re facing the favourites in the last 16, whereas you can get odds of 300/1 on Schalke to lift the trophy. But with Tedesco entering the Champions League knockouts less than two years after battling at the bottom of the second division, who would be foolish enough to predict what happens next?